Джонатан Келлерман - Night Moves

I worked long days on two custody evals but found time to recheck social network sites for anything on Hargis Braun and the three women who’d lived with him.

Barbara Braun’s Facebook page was a skimpy thing. A few relatives, no human friends. The only posted photographs were her and a massive black Newfoundland.

Wally was certified as a therapy dog and demonstrated his interpersonal skills by never leaving the side of a small, pinched-faced woman.

Barb Braun was dependent on a pair of forearm crutches. Add that to EmJay’s arthritis and you didn’t need to be Freud.

Mary Ellen Braun had seemed healthy. I Googled her anyway. Her LinkedIn listing reached out to retailers, said nothing about health problems. But her name showed up in a support group for women with chronic fatigue syndrome.

A man attracted to disability.

The impulse was to tag that as pathological. My training leads me to avoid dime-store diagnosis.

Joining search parties. Planting unsanctioned trees. Butting in during a domestic.

Saving a snake.

For all I knew, Hal Braun’s taste in women spoke to a rare nobility. A man with ideals and goals, however absurdly romanticized.

A poster boy for No Good Deed.

Voicemail on all of Milo’s lines. I left messages but he didn’t call back. Maybe sixteen days of nothing on Braun had put him in a funk. Or his attention had shifted to a more manageable crime.

That night, Robin and I had a late dinner at the Grill on the Alley and were walking to the Seville when my cell chirped.

Ten ten p.m.

He said, “Sitting down, amigo?”

“Upright.”

“Then maybe you should brace yourself. You’re not gonna believe this.”

At eight forty-nine p.m., Hollywood Division patrol officers finishing their dinner at Tio Taco had responded to an anonymous report of a “415” — unspecified disturbance — and driven to the Sahara Motor Inn on Franklin Avenue just east of Western.

Parking in the mostly empty lot, they knocked on the door of room fourteen. After receiving no reply, Officer Eugene Stargill pretended to peer through a slit in the plastic vertical blinds and see nothing out of order.

“Bogus,” he pronounced. “Let’s book.”

His partner, a gung-ho kid fresh out of the academy named Bradley Buttons, insisted on having the manager check.

As Stargill figured out ways of getting back at the pain-in-the-ass rookie, the manager, Kiran “Keith” Singh, unlocked the door.

At eight fifty-four p.m., Stargill phoned in a dead body, making it sound as if he’d been conscientious.

Hollywood detectives Petra Connor and Raul Biro arrived on the scene at nine eighteen. By nine forty, a coroner’s investigator had gone through the DB’s pockets and produced I.D.

During the brief drive from Wilcox Avenue, the victim’s name had sparked Petra’s memory but she couldn’t get a handle on it. One of those tip-of-the-mind things.

Just as Biro turned off the ignition and she saw the motel, she figured it out. Scanning the homicide list and checking out the details of weird ones was a daily habit for her, though it rarely paid off.

This time it did.

She called Milo. He called me.

I arrived at ten forty-eight, spotted both of them just inside the yellow tape, bootied and gloved. The air smelled of cheap gasoline and fried food. The motel layout was basic: fifteen green doors arrayed to the right, a pitted but generous parking lot. The building was sad gray stucco with a matching warped roof. If the east end of Hollywood ever really got renewed, the value was the lot. The obvious replacement, yet another strip mall.

Milo was facing away and didn’t notice me. His clothes were rumpled, his hair ragged. Petra stood next to him, slim, elegant, black wedge cut swept back from a finely molded ivory face. She looked like a socialite hanging with the uncle who’d blown his inheritance.

She waved. He turned and said, “As promised, insane.”

By ten fifty, I was looking at the prone form of Chet Corvin, facedown on a pink, blood-soaked polyester carpet.

For a hot-sheet Hollywood motel, not a bad room. Management here utilized something minty-fresh to disinfect. The fragrance failed to compete with the copper of fresh blood and the sulfurous emissions from relaxed bowels.

Walls covered in flesh-colored vinyl were freckled with red halfway up and to the right of the corpse. A royal-blue velveteen spread that looked cheap but new lay smoothly, neatly atop the queen-sized bed. A pay-by-the-minute vibrating gizmo, complete with credit card reader, gave off a chromium glare.

The thirty-inch flat-screen facing the bed was tuned to a pay-per-view menu. Adult Entertainment. Men’s clothing was draped over a chair, calfskin loafers lined up neatly, each stuffed with a precisely rolled argyle sock. Chet Corvin wore nothing but boxer shorts, now soiled, as were his thighs. His bare back was broad and hairless, bulky muscles padded with fat. One hand was concealed under his torso. The nails of the other were manicured and glossy.

Two ruby-black holes formed a neat colon on the back of his neck, visible in the thin strands just above the hairline. One wound placed precisely above the other.

I said, “Skillful shooting.”

Milo nodded. “C.I. says the first woulda likely put him right down — straight to the brain stem. After that, the shooter could take time lining up the second.”

“Maybe a statement,” I said.

Petra said, “Such as?”

“I’m proud of my work.”

Both of them frowned.

My gaze shifted to the wood-aping plastic nightstand bolted to the wall left of the bed. A man’s alligator-skin wallet sat next to two water glasses and a bottle of Chardonnay. Sonoma Valley, Russian River, three years old. A label that looked high-end but I’m no expert.

I said, “Date night?”

Milo said, “Heavy smell of perfume in the lav says some kind of party. Petra informs me it’s Armani, probably sprayed — aqua what?”

“Acqua di Gioia,” she said. “I sometimes use it myself.” Smiling. “When I need to wake Eric up.”

I said, “Expensive?”

“I get mine at the outlets but even with that, not cheap.”

Milo said, “Rounding out the picture, we’ve also got some longish brunette hairs that aren’t Chet’s on the bathroom counter. The kid at the front desk claims the room was cleaned a few hours before Corvin checked in at eight eleven, no one else used it in the interim, hopefully he’s being straight and we’re not talking leftover debris.”

“I think he is, nice kid,” said Petra. “Goes to college during the day, just started working here. We’re not talking some street-smart compulsive liar.” To me: “Anything else occur to you?”

I said, “Corvin drove a Range Rover. Didn’t see it out front.”

“Wasn’t here. We’ll check local CCTV, see if we can pick it up.”

Milo said, “No video here except behind the desk, good shot of Corvin checking in. He looks relaxed. Used his real name, paid with a company credit card.”

I said, “Someone else who was proud of himself.”

“Fits with what we’ve seen of ol’ Chet.” To Petra: “Like I told you, guy was a blowhard.”

I said, “Shot dead thirty-eight minutes after he got here. He check in alone?”

“No one else on the video,” said Milo. “Whether his amusement for the evening was waiting in the car or she arrived separately is impossible to know at this point. The setup is everyone pulls up to their own door and for obvious reasons there are no cameras in the lot except for one at the far end with a view of the rear alley.”

Petra said, “Monitoring the dumpsters, God forbid someone should hijack the trash.”